Warner Bros. is exploring how to further sell ways to enjoy its entertainment content across multiple platforms in the new frontier known as the Internet of Things, or IoT.

The University of Southern California hosted its Intelligent IoT Integrator (I3) Consortium on Thursday at the Galen Center in Los Angeles to gather its founding members and officially launch the consortium. IoT is a concept that envisions the internet as more than just a way for people to communicate and share information, allowing for objects to interconnect via built-in sensors, camera and actuators.

“I3 is looking at this notion that the internet is more than just people, it’s about people becoming more aware of their surroundings,” said Bhaskar Krishnamachari, professor at the Viterbi school of engineering co-founder of I3. “The consortium is helping to make the conversation around IoT go beyond just one application and trying to allow third-party application developers to connect to data that’s coming from their communities and build a large number of useful applications for IoT.”

Warner Bros. is one of the founding members of I3, which was founded at USC with the support of the City of Los Angeles. In the new landscape of the Internet of Things, Warner Bros. is interested in developing ways for consumers to digitally purchase and personalize their entertainment experiences then integrate them into their daily lives via their digital devices.

Related

“What we sell can be sold as as a digital right, the right to watch ‘Wonder Woman’ on your television, the right to walk into a theater to watch ‘Justice League,’ the right to play Injustice on your game console,” said Bryan Barber,VP of digital innovation at Warner Bros. “The Internet of Things is a development that can create millions and millions of internet consumer touch points. The devices you encounter could light up or respond in ways that are uniquely tailored to you as a fan of DC Comics, Harry Potter, or their own fandom.”

“There’s a natural intersection between the entertainment industry and the Internet of Things. Warner Bros. is supporting the development of IoT and has joined and supported I3 because we’re excited by this organization and its ability to create an innovation platform,” he continued. “This is a new frontier and we don’t yet know all the possibilities for Warner Bros. in the Internet of Things. What we’re really want to do is to start trying things and start learning and is going to give us the innovation platform that allows us to do that.”

The I3 Consortium is was created as a collaboration between the USC Marshall School of Business and the Viterbi School of Engineering, although Krishnamachari said he hopes to one day expand the initiative to include the School of Cinematic Arts and the Rossier School of Education. Other presenters at the consortium included the City of Los Angeles and Tech Mahindra, an information technology company, that introduced the new Community Action Platform for Engagement (“CAPE,”) a new community-based digital platform that will help to build smarter, more sustainable and energy-efficient cities.

Sign Up for Daily Insider Newsletter

Facebook gave tech companies like Amazon, Spotify, and Microsoft more access to user data than the company had previously disclosed. According to a New York Times report, the special arrangements were discovered in internal Facebook documents that track partnerships and were acquired by the Times. The report states that Facebook gave Netflix and Spotify access [...]

“Date Gone Wrong” is the first of a slate of original short-format video series being produced at Eros Now, the Indian streaming service operated by Eros International. The company plans about 50 series launches in 2019 in its Quickie strand, as part of its recently hinted-at strategy of launching 100 new series on the platform. [...]

Oath, we hardly knew ye. Less than two years after Verizon unveiled Oath as the name for the merged AOL-Yahoo internet group, the telco announced that the name will be discontinued, with Oath to be renamed the “Verizon Media Group” as of Jan. 8, 2019. Oath has been a disappointment for Verizon: The telco spent nearly $10 [...]

Quibi, the mobile-TV startup led by Jeffrey Katzenberg and CEO Meg Whitman, has tapped several Hulu alums among its latest hires. Tim Connolly, formerly senior VP of partnerships and distribution at Hulu, has joined Quibi as head of partnerships and advertising. Jim O’Gorman, previously Hulu’s SVP of talent and organization, is now head of talent and [...]

Industry organizations and major companies in Europe and Hollywood welcomed Tuesday a high-level European Union agreement that in large part preserves producers’ ability to sell movies and TV shows on an exclusive territory-by-territory basis. Territorial licensing is a financial backbone of the film and TV business in Europe. Recognition of such licensing came last Thursday in [...]

Kun Gao, co-founder and former general manager of Crunchyroll, has stepped aside from day-to-day management of the anime-streaming service, which is now led by general manager Joanne Waage. According to a Crunchyroll statement, Gao remains “very much involved” with the service as an adviser and is “continuing to work on several projects.” In addition, Gao [...]

Charter Communications agreed to a settlement valued at $174.2 million to resolve a lawsuit alleging the U.S.’s second-biggest cable operator defrauded broadband customers by failing to deliver promised internet speeds. According to the terms of the settlement with the New York Attorney General’s Office, Charter will pay $62.5 million in direct refunds to 700,000 active broadband [...]